My instructor says that the Brelands “instinctive drift” shows the “fundamental weakness of operant theory.” What is “instinctive drift” and why is it so harmful to operant theory?
Instinctive drift doesn’t harm operant theory at all. Your instructor has been taken in by generations of academic folklore. “Instinctive drift” (or sometimes “instinctual drift”), said to be the gradual shifting of learned behavior back towards instinctual behavior, exists primarily in textbooks and the imaginations of critics of behavior analysis. Instinctive drift is not, in fact, the inevitable outcome of conditioning. And when it does seem to occur, it is a perfectly obvious and predictable outcome of operant theory, not a violation of it. Consider this: You observe some species-specific behavior during conditioning. The dog rolls over on cue but begs and whines too. The rat bites the lever that it also presses for food. The raccoon washes the large “coin” you are shaping it to put in the bank. Should these things happen? Sometimes. If they do, you shouldn’t be surprised. If you are reinforcing behavior with food, you are also pairing the food with various objects and events in th
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